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Japan: How Resilient a Nation?

Notions of stoicism, community and acceptance of suffering are at the marrow of Japanese cultural identity. Its people will draw on those reserves as they face the challenges ahead.

Photo: Reuters Pictures

Warding off the chill, a woman surveys the damage in Ishiwaka City.

Now that rescuers and news teams have reached the coastal areas in Miyagi and Fukushima, some sense of the staggering physical destruction wrought by Friday’s earthquake in Japan is beginning to emerge. Whole villages and towns that once lined estuaries and inlets have been scoured off the map.

Tens of thousands of people are missing and hundreds of bodies are coming to light. Understandably, people watching the disaster from afar are trying to gauge how people in Japan are coping psychologically.

A full answer is clearly impossible at this stage, but the question is still worth raising, if only to bring out tacit assumptions. Is there any merit in what one BBC reporter called the “stereotype of the Japanese being stoical and just getting on with things”?

First it is better to use, rather than avoid, another apparent cliché of disaster reporting: Japan, including its wider diaspora, is currently in shock, and it is important to underline that.

So sudden and violent a transformation of the terrain, and such a loss of life, is bound to strain comprehension. On Friday, moments before 14:46, everything was as usual; minutes later, the country had entered what its prime minister called the worst crisis since its destruction during the Second World War.

Just the economic damage alone is certain to be disorienting. Japan, a country whose economy relies on manufacturing, now faces an unprecedented period of electricity rationing as a result of damage to key nuclear plants.

Nevertheless, many non-Japanese commentators have been struck by the apparent sense of orderly calm they have witnessed in footage coming out of the country and have found it hard to decode.

Japan has been hit both by an earthquake – more accurately, a complex sequence of shocks – and a colossally destructive tsunami, which was too close and too large to be defended against. And now, reports of radiation leaking from damaged nuclear power plants have added to the confusion of threats and stresses.

As one would expect, the almost surreal sense of life as usual was most evident in areas not directly affected by the flooding – Tokyo went back to work on Monday. But even in the tsunami-stricken north-east, along with pictures of people searching for relatives and in clear distress, there have been images of primary school teachers shepherding frightened children in rescue boats, with a determination to project a persona that suggested everything was fine, almost as if they were on regular outing to a park.

Similarly, the outside world has seen images of people near the troubled reactors in Fukushima queuing in a seemingly relaxed way to be tested for radiological contamination.

Such apparent calm is not necessarily evidence of a uniquely Japanese type of hardiness. In fact, scientific research from other mass-casualty disasters around the world shows that panic is more rare than we imagine. In traumatic situations people commonly experience elevated emotional states, but may appear quite restrained and calm on the surface.

Rapid swings in mood, periods of social withdrawal, or seeing sudden intrusive images of disturbing events replaying are all common reactions in the immediate aftermath of a disaster, even in people who are coping well. While some may find these disturbing, they usually subside of their own accord in the weeks that follow.

But is there any scientific data that backs up the idea that Japan is a particularly resilient culture, whose people are better able to weather these tides? Available evidence is sketchy and inconclusive. Some research found that people affected by the 1995 Kobe earthquake recovered more quickly than those in a comparable earthquake in Gujarat in India in 1991. The researchers suggested that that may have been because community groups in Japan were quicker to organise.

Certainly, the general literature on disaster response backs up the suggestion that active coping strategies, such as helping in the clean-up or looking after friends or relatives, are psychologically protective. Doing something, however small, helps to connect people and fight the creeping and corrosive sense of helplessness.

In Japan, working toward the welfare of the group has traditionally had more priority than the individual. The psychologist Hayao Kawai, in conversation with the novelist Haruki Murakami, once joked that teachers in Japan often leave the injunction "Be an individual" written up on classroom blackboards, because they fear that without such an explicit reminder students might find themselves unable to escape the cultural gravity of group-think.

However Kawai also suggested that the Japanese reluctance to individualise oneself may actually be protective in disaster situations. He noticed that the Japanese he worked with tended not to assume blame for arriving in a bad situation that they had no control over, whereas Americans often did.

These notions of resilience, community support and the ability to adjust oneself to suffering have a deep traction in Japan. They are at the marrow of how the Japanese see themselves.

This explains some of the irritation some of my Japanese friends have experienced while watching European television coverage over the last few days that has not taken this stoicism into account. Why, they wonder, did anchors in studios in Europe and America phone people in the areas unaffected by the tsunami and ask so insistently whether they had seen panic in the streets? That is not something they would have expected.

Part of that misunderstanding simply lies in the fact that those outside the country fail to appreciate the full scale of the preventive measures Japan has taken in earthquake-proofing its buildings and training its citizens from kindergarten age in survival drills.

But one friend, living in London with its notoriously delay-ridden transport system, was annoyed on day two of the disaster to hear newscasters detail the continuing delays on the Tokyo railway system, while failing to point out that just 16 hours after a magnitude 9.0 earthquake, most of the major arterial commuter lines into Tokyo were open again.

The problem, of course, is that the human and physical loss is so much more daunting in the tsunami-affected areas of the north-east. Even in secure areas, shortages of food and the nuclear situation are likely to further fray nerves as the crisis continues.

But confronted with all this, the Japanese may still have useful resources in their heritage that they can draw on. First, there is historical precedent. Japan has faced two extraordinary emotional cataclysms in the last 150 years: the forcible opening of its markets by Western powers in the 1850s and military defeat in 1945.

Prime Minister Naoto Kan referred to the latter in a speech on Monday, calling on each and every citizen to work together for a new Japan, just as the 1945 generation rebuilt Japan through considerable hardship and sacrifice.

The expression, sou iu mon da yo, ("It is just that kind of thing") with which people in Japan have been comforting themselves over the last few days, was typical of that generation, and, I was told, was one of the first things that a friend’s grandmother said after being evacuated from a village that was largely destroyed by the tsunami in Miyagi.

These attitudes have deeper underpinnings in language and religion. The expression, shoganai, ("It can’t be helped; we’ll just have to put up with it") is one of the first phrases foreigners learn in Japanese. Indeed, the whole grammar is written in something of an impersonal voice, implying that things just happen.

From Buddhism comes the doctrine that life is suffering – the First Noble Truth – and that attachment to the way things appear to be is illusory, as everything is subject to change.

More importantly still, perhaps, is the active attitude Buddhism has toward death. Japan is not a death-averse society in the way that many European Protestant societies are. There are, long, elaborate mourning rituals, and the newly dead are never far from the living. Instead, they are waiting to become full ancestors and are felt to have a guiding influence over those they left behind.

When someone dies in Japan, it is traditional to bring out the best photographs of the deceased to create a shrine, whereas in Britain, for instance, such visual reminders of separation may be too painful at first.

We know from the epidemiological impact on trauma that however well society as a whole deals with the disaster over the next few months, in the longer term there will be individuals who don’t do so well. Some may find it hard to escape from the impact of Friday, March 11, 2011. Even a small percentage of the 127 million people who dwell in this nation would still amount to a significant number.

Hurricane Katrina suggests the poorest and those who experience the greatest amount of resource loss are at particularly high risk of developing post-traumatic stress disorder. But regardless of circumstances, we can’t predict with certainty who may or may not be affected.

Many in Japan aren’t entirely comfortable with the Western scientific definition of traumatic stress. In 2004, when I interviewed survivors of Hiroshima for the BBC film, "Hiroshima," to commemorate the 60th anniversary of the atomic bombing, many of those I talked to dismissed the suggestion that they may have experienced any lingering traumatic impairment.

Then ten minutes later, one would be talking about how he used alcohol as self-medication against nightmares, and another about finding it hard to take her grandchildren to the swimming pool because she often saw bodies floating in the water as she had in 1945. It is important that the expectation that most will do well doesn’t lead to the marginalisation of those who don’t, or having their experience downplayed.

The psychiatric relief teams working in the Kobe earthquake, however, found that people there who were in continuing trouble were more willing to come forward for what they called kokoro no kea, ("Care for the heart”) a term that has some overlap with the Western notions of post-traumatic stress, something which may reflect a generational shift.

The reconstruction task ahead is immense, but the example of Hiroshima, now a vibrant city of 1.1 million people, is a testament to the ability of Japan to rebuild. This is a little known facet of that story: The atomic bomb was dropped on August 6, 1945; just three days later, on August 9, a team of railway workers, soldiers and volunteers managed to get the first streetcar running again along a 1-kilometre stretch of track that they had managed to resurrect in a city that had been destroyed.

Gavin Rees is the director of Dart Centre Europe. Responsible for implementing the Centre’s work across Europe, Gavin runs workshops and discussion groups on trauma awareness, resilience and interviewing skills for working journalists and journalism students in a range of countries around the world.

Prior to working at the Dart Centre, Gavin produced business and political news for US, British and Japanese news channels, and has worked on drama and documentary films for the BBC, Channel 4 and independent film companies. He was a leading producer on the BBC film Hiroshima, which won an International Emmy in 2006. He is a visiting fellow in the Media School at Bournemouth University, and is a board member of both the European Society of Traumatic Stress Studies and the UK Psychological Trauma Society.

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Monstering: Inside America's Policy of Secret Interrogations and Torture in the Terror War

Tara McKelvey — the first U.S.journalist to speak with female prisoners from Abu Ghraib — traveled to the Middle East and across the United States to seek out victims and perpetrators. McKelvey tells how soldiers, acting in an atmosphere that encouraged abuse and sadism, were unleashed on a prison population of which the vast majority, according to army documents, were innocent civilians.

Gogo Mama : A Journey Into the Lives of Twelve African Women

This book is a journey across Africa, in all its complexity; from the townships of Johannesburg, to the back alleys of Zanzibar; from the frontline of the war in the Sudan, to the nightclubs of Cairo. It is a vivid, illuminating and often haunting composite picture of an extraordinary continent, in the words of the women who know it best.

Shaking the Foundations: 200 Years of Investigative Journalism in America

This is the first anthology of its kind, bringing together outstanding practitioners of the muckraking tradition, from the Revolutionary era to the present day. Ranging from mainstream figures like Woodward and Bernstein to legendary iconoclasts such as I. F. Stone and Ida B. Wells-Barnett, the dispatches in this collection combine the thrill of the chase after facts with a burning sense of outrage

Trauma Therapy in Context: The Science and Craft of Evidence-based Practice

This book examines several current clinical approaches to trauma-focused treatment. Rather than describe theoretical approaches in isolation, the editors have integrated these interventions into a broader clinical context. Chapter authors emphasize basic therapeutic skills such as empathic listening, instilling resilience, and creating meaning, in the service of empirically-supported, highly efficacious trauma interventions.

Living a Year of Kaddish: A Memoir

Ari Goldman’s exploration of the emotional and spiritual aspects of spending a year in mourning for his father will resonate with anyone who has lost a loved one, as he describes how this year affected him as a son, husband, father, and member of his community.

The Search for God at Harvard

What began as a project to deepen his knowledge of the world’s sacred beliefs turned out to be an extraordinary journey of spiritual illumination, one in which Goldman reexamined his own faith as an Orthodox Jew and opened his mind to the great religions of the world. Written with warmth, humor, and penetrating clarity, The Search for God at Harvard is a book for anyone who has wrestled with the question of what it means to take religion seriously today.

Being Jewish: The Spiritual and Cultural Practice of Judaism Today

In Being Jewish, Ari L. Goldman offers eloquent thoughts about an absorbing exploration of modern Judaism. A bestselling author and widely respected chronicler of Jewish life, Goldman vividly contrasts the historical meaning of Judaism's heritage with the astonishing and multiform character of the religion today.

Writing on Gravestones

This book is a collection of reflective crime pieces, often approaching the events from different angles, yet written by on-the spot observers and reporters. There is an emphasis on the victims, and as a result these stories are written with sensitivity and compassion rather than sensationalism.

Lives of Crime: The Melbourne Gangland Murders

Smart Health Choices

This fully revised and updated new edition of Smart Health Choices will provide you with the tools for assessing health advice, whether it comes from a specialist, general practitioner, naturopath, the media, the Internet, or a friend. It shows you how to take an active role in your health care, and to make the best decisions for you and your loved ones based on personal preferences and the best available evidence.

Tragedias & Periodistas

9/11: Mental Health in the Wake of Terrorist Attacks

This book comprehensively describes the psychological response to the 9/11 terrorist attacks in New York and, to a lesser degree, Washington DC. The impact of what happened on the local and US national population is considered through various epidemiological studies, as well as personal accounts from some of those more directly involved.

Feet to the Fire: The Media After 9/11

Filled with astonishing personal stories, conflict, and drama, Feet to the Fire gives readers the rare opportunity to walk a mile in the shoes of this nation’s most powerful journalists and news executives and experience their highly stressful environments. With each new and revealing interview, Borjesson gathers devastating details from national security and intelligence reporters, White House journalists, Middle East experts, war correspondents, and others. Like pieces of a terrible puzzle, these conversations combine to provide a hair-raising view of the mechanisms by which the truth has been manufactured post 9/11.

Thank You For Your Service

Chronicling Trauma: Journalists and Writers on Violence and Loss

Grounded in the latest research in the fields of trauma studies, literary biography, and the history of journalism, this study draws upon the lively and sometimes breathtaking accounts of popular writers such as Charles Dickens, Ernest Hemingway, Dorothy Parker, Graham Greene, and Truman Capote, exploring the role that trauma has played in shaping their literary works. Underwood notes that the influence of traumatic experience upon journalistic literature is being reshaped by a number of factors, including news media trends, the advance of the Internet, the changing nature of the journalism profession, the proliferation of psychoactive drugs, and journalists' greater self-awareness of the impact of trauma in their work.

Daring to Feel: Violence, the News Media, and Their Emotions

Daring to Feel is a bold, brave book. Jody Santos challenges the entrenched doctrine that journalists are neutral, dispassionate observers of 'fact.' Santos demonstrates how journalists themselves and society as a whole benefit from emotionally nuanced and emotionally engaged reporting. This is a beautifully written tribute to the passion of journalists and the heart-wrenching stories they cover.

The Things They Cannot Say: Stories Soldiers Won't Tell You About What They've Seen, Done or Failed to Do in War

In The Things They Cannot Say, award-winning journalist and author Kevin Sites asks these difficult questions of eleven soldiers and marines, who—by sharing the truth about their wars—display a rare courage that transcends battlefield heroics. For each of these men, many of whom Sites first met while in Afghanistan and Iraq, the truth means something different. One struggles to recover from a head injury he believes has stolen his ability to love; another attempts to make amends for the killing of an innocent man; yet another finds respect for the enemy fighter who tried to kill him. Sites also shares the unsettling narrative of his own failures during war—including his complicity in a murder—and the redemptive powers of storytelling that saved him from a self-destructive downward spiral.

In the Hot Zone: One Man, One Year, Twenty Wars

Kevin Sites, the award-winning journalist, covered virtually every major global hot spot as the first Internet correspondent for Yahoo! News. Beginning his journey with the anarchic chaos of Somalia in September 2005 and ending with the Israeli-Hezbollah war in the summer of 2006, Sites talks with rebels and government troops, child soldiers and child brides, and features the people on every side, including those caught in the cross fire. His honest reporting helps destroy the myths of war by putting a human face on war's inhumanity.

Swimming with Warlords: A Dozen-Year Journey Across the Afghan War

Using his trademark immersive style, Kevin Sites uncovered surprising stories with unexpected truths. He swam in the Kunduz River with an infamous warlord named Nabi Gechi, who demonstrated both his fearsome killing skills as well as a genius for peaceful invention. Sites talked with ex-Taliban fighters, politicians, female cops, farmers, drug addicts, and diplomats, and patrolled with American and Afghan soldiers. In Swimming with Warlords he helps us to understand this kingdom of primitive beauty, dark mysteries, and savage violence, as well as the conflict that has cost billions of dollars and thousands of lives--and what we might expect tomorrow and in the years to come.

The Price They Paid: Enduring Wounds Of War

The Price They Paid is the stunning and dramatic true story of a legendary helicopter commander in Vietnam and the flight crews that followed him into the most intensive helicopter warfare ever—and how that brutal experience has changed their lives in the forty years since the war ended.

What Have We Done: The Moral Injury of Our Longest Wars

Most Americans are now familiar with PTSD and its prevalence among troops. In this groundbreaking book, David Wood examines the far more pervasive yet less understood experience of those we send to war: moral injury, the violation of our fundamental values of right and wrong that so often occurs in the impossible moral dilemmas of modern conflict.

Collective Conviction: The Story of Disaster Action

Collective Conviction tells the story of Disaster Action, a small charity founded in 1991 by survivors and bereaved people from the disasters of the late 1980s, including Zeebrugge, King's Cross, Clapham, Lockerbie, Hillsborough and the Marchioness. The aims were to create a health and safety culture in which disasters were less likely to occur and to support others affected by similar events.

High Tea in Mosul

When Lynne O’Donnell met Pauline and Margaret in Iraq she could never have guessed the wealth of stories she’d discover. Over tea the two women tell Lynne of their lives in the country: each having married Iraqi men had then relocated from England more than thirty years before.